DIY "Re-Do Stairs" Project

My husband, two sons and I have lived in our home for just over five years now. We have had the same old carpet on our stairs leading from the foyer to main floor since we moved in. Everyday I walked on it I told myself "I'm going to rip this carpet up one day...I'm going to do it!"

Carpeted Stairs (Before)

 

The time came to make that thought in my mind a reality. I have been in love with the sleek dark wood step and white riser combination for a long time now. To be perfectly honest, I saw this style for the first time on the hit comedy 'Modern Family' and have wanted it ever since. It looks clean, classic and very sharp. Since this is the first thing you see when stepping into our home I knew it needed a face lift. So up came the carpet. Not easily I should add. First I began by basically taking a peek at what lay beneath the drab carpet...the riser showed promise. A nice smooth piece of wood. Perfect, I can go ahead and rip the rest of the carpet up and won't need to do much work to make them beautiful...wrong. Oh, so wrong I was. The steps I found were made of particle board and there was no hope to make them look good. Sad face.

 

Riser look liked "useable" wood, Step was NOT

 

Particle Board...ugh.

 

 Carpet Completely Removed (Gross)*The stairs looked like this for approx. a month and a half*

 

Bye Bye Ugly Carpet!



Enter husband here. My hubby was now the only way I could achieve those beautiful stairs I dreamed of. I can make things look pretty, but this task would include a lot more manual labour then I could do on my own. Luckily, he was a good sport about it and was happy to help out. He basically ended up having to do a good majority of the work and did an amazing job if I do say so myself. We can now officially say we are on the DIY bandwagon. So much pride when you finally complete a project and can sit back and admire your work. In the end, the journey was worth it. I am not going to lay out a step by step process of what we did exactly to get the ugly carpeted stairs into the beautiful wooden ones they are now, but I can tell you I did a lot of research. There are many blogs out there that can help you in the right direction if you wish to do this to your own stairs at home. Every home is different and will come with its own challenges, just be prepared for the challenges that will arise and be ready to tackle them head on.

Our first challenge came when I finally got all the carpet up. After taking needle nose pliers and removing every single staple that was stuck in the particle board, I'd say between twenty and thirty per stair, we assumed we could use what is called a stair cover kit. These are pre-packaged kits you can purchase from Home Depot that can be stained in any color you wish and simply need to be cut down in length to fit. After purchasing one kit we soon found that they wouldn't work for our stairs. They were just too small. Since this plan was a no go, we had to find a new solution. Unfortunately, this new solution would involve a lot more hard work then we had initially thought. Each and every one of those particle board steps had to be ripped up. Again, here is where my hubby needed to step in. He likes using tools and muscle so this task was easy for him. I'm sure he had fun too. We ended up getting full steps with a pre-rounded edge and pre-cut riser. The steps were made of oak and we decided to stain them an espresso color. Two coats each step. They are now a beautiful and rich brown tone. Which matches a lot of our furniture in our house, as well as the mirror frame in our front foyer. This kind of happened by accident but we are happy it worked out the way it did. The risers each got two coats of white primer. After the stain dried we applied three coats of polyurethane designed for floors, that was oil based for durability. Kids and wood, we didn't want to take any chances.

 Stained steps, ready to go!

 Painted risers, ready to go!

Making the cuts...watching his fingers as he goes.

 

Perfect fit!

 



Placing the steps one by one



Once the steps were ready to go my hubby measured each step and cut them to size for a more then perfect fit. Starting with tearing up only a few existing steps at a time he began placing them with the use of No More Nails adhesive. Since glue these days is so durable, no actual nails were necessary. You wouldn't want to put nails in the tops of your steps anyways as they would be very difficult to cover. We placed about four steps and risers at a time each evening over a three day span. We used my husbands weights to ensure a good bond from frame to stair. Sometimes you just use what you have.

 Weights, multi-purpose use

This was a slow process considering we both needed to help with the stairs but have two young boys and couldn't trap ourselves on the bottom floor with no stairs leading to the main floor in our house. It may have taken longer then we would have liked but it got done and it was well worth the wait. We had some scratches on the walls so I decided it would be best to apply a new fresh coat of paint. We also removed our bannister to give it a face lift as well. Since the risers were so white, the bannister appeared beige, but now it is clean and white like the rest. No one is allowed to touch it anymore... this is the only way it will stay white! No shoes allowed on the new stairs either, just in case.

Here is the final product!

 Ta-Da!!! From drab to fab!

 

 

Thanks for reading, check back for all of our new projects to come. Every home deserves a little TLC.

 

 

-Mama Bear Johnstone